Reader: Lowe's leaves a big gap at Alameda Square. More dim sum!

In honor of the Chinese new year, we dropped by Alameda Square twice this week, for dim sum at both King's Land Seafood Restaurant and Super Star Asian. Somehow, both restaurants managed to survive all the disruption created by the construction of a giant Lowe's store two years ago.

I always thought it was a stupid move to build a Lowe's there. At least the shopping center had few vacancies and a lot of traffic when it was still a bit of a dump. Now there's a gigantic retail space sitting vacant, and probably will be for years given the economy. Nice job, DURA.

What would you like to see in that former Lowe's? An Asian supermarket? A dim sum department store? Tomorrow, at least some of the empty space will be filled by a new year's dragon dance; stop by at noon to see it.

Patricia Calhoun co-founded Westword, Denver’s News and Arts weekly, in 1977; she’s been the editor there ever since. She’s a regular on the weekly Colorado Public Television roundtable Colorado Inside Out, the former president of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies -- a post that got her an unexpected interview with former President Bill Clinton in front of a thousand people (while she was in flip-flops) -- and played a real journalist in John Sayles’s Silver City.